1. Field
Apparatuses and devices consistent with the following description relate to a user input device, and more particularly, to a touch panel and an electronic device including the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
A touch panel is one example of an user input device used to determine an input signal from a user and a position on a touch panel by sensing contact by the user thereon. A user may input data or signals to a touch panel by contacting or pressing the touch panel with his or her finger, a stylus pen or the like. Recently, a touch panel has been developed which can process continuous inputs or multi-touch inputs, such as a flick, a drag, a scroll, a pinch, a tap-and-slide and so on, wherein the terms continuous input and multi-touch input denote an input that is conducted when a user continually contacts or presses a user touch surface of the touch panel.
A touch panel may be implemented as a touch pad which is used as a substitute for a mouse for a laptop computer, a netbook and the like, or the touch panel may substitute for an input switch of an electronic device. Also, the touch panel may be used in association with a display. A touch panel which is mounted on the screen of a display, such as Liquid Crystal Display (LCD), Plasma Display Panel (PDP), Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) and the like, is called a “touch screen”. A touch panel may be integrated with a display to configure the screen of the display or may be attached additionally on the screen of the display.
The touch panel can be substituted for a user input device such as a keyboard and allow simple manipulations. Moreover, the touch panel can provide users with various types of buttons according to the types of applications to be executed or stages of the executed application. Accordingly, a touch panel, specifically, a touch screen, has been widely used as an input device for electronic equipment, such as a mobile phone, a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), a Portable Multimedia Player (PMP), a digital camera, a portable games, an MP3 player, etc., as well as an Automated Teller Machine (ATM), an information trader, a ticket vending machine, etc.
A touch panel can be classified into a resistive type, a capacitive type, a saw type, an infrared type, etc., according to the methods of sensing an input of the user. A capacitive type touch panel determines whether a user presses the touch panel and the position of the user's press by measuring variations in capacitance due to contact or pressure. However, the capacitive type touch panel does not provide a user with a sense of input, that is, a feeling of recognition that a user gets upon inputting. In order to overcome this disadvantage, a method of installing a vibration motor below a touch panel has been proposed. The method offers users a sense of input by vibrating the whole touch panel using the vibration motor when a press by the user is sensed. However, the method fails to offer a sense of input when a continuous input, such as a multi-touch input, is sensed, and also users cannot check if the continuous input is being processed correctly unless they continue to watch the touch screen or display.